Cambridge University Archives : Old Proctor's Book

Cambridge University Archives

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This book contains a compilation of statutes, charters, orders, oaths etc. prepared for the use of the Proctors, the Chancellor’s executive officers. For the earliest material, a date after c.1385-9 is indicated by the inclusion of the obit of Master William Gotham in the Calendar (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(10);return false;'>f.1v</a>), and a date before 1396 suggested by the absence of a statute relating to the commemoration of the Chancellor Michael de Causton. Originally containing all the statutes by which the University was then ruled, the book’s creation may have been a result of the reorganisation of records after the partial destruction of the University’s muniments during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Other portions of the book are now to be found in the Senior Proctor’s Book (classmark: UA Collect.Admin.1 ff.60r-80v) and Junior Proctor’s Book (classmark: UA Collect.Admin.2 ff.107r-110v), first commissioned in the 1490s. Marginal annotations in the form “Stat. Antiq.” made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Dr Parris, Vice-Chancellor 1747-8, and Joseph Romilly refer to the statutes copied into the Senior Proctor’s Book and as issued in the <i>editio princeps</i> in 1785. </p> <p style='text-align: justify;'>Jacqueline Cox, Keeper of the University Archives</p>